How do I generate a Google Analytics ID?
First, you need a Google Analytics account. If you don’t already have one, register here.
Follow Google’s instructions on setting up a new Universal Analytics property in Google Analytics. The website URL you need to enter is the URL of your CloudCast player. It will look something like: https://videoplayer.telvue.com/player/_02qqWgLmQ33dPptCtruqqu2H7hKIH16
Copy/Paste that URL into your Google Analytics to generate a “Property ID”: a snippet of code that looks like UA-XXXXXXXX-X.
- Copy the Property ID code.
- Log in to connect.telvue.com.
- Go to Administration → VOD Players (To track views on your Roku app, go to Admin → Roku Apps.)
- Choose the VOD player, Roku App, Apple TV App, or Fire TV app you want to track, and open the Edit pane
- From the left Nav, select Player (or Roku App, Apple TV App, Fire TV App )
- Right under the Name of that player or app, there is a field for Google Analytics Tracking Code
- Enter the code in that field, and Save
It is recommended that you use the same Google Analytics tracking code across all Players and Apps, minimally for those that display the same programming pool.
How to interpret Google Analytics?
Log in to Google Analytics to begin tracking video views. It takes about 24 hours for tracking information to begin to propagate to Google Analytics.
The easiest way to interpret and visualize the CloudCast viewer data in Google Analytics is to import the shared TelVue CloudCast Dashboard from the Google Analytics Solutions Gallery.
- First login into your Google Analytics account
- Visit the TelVue CloudCast Dashboard in the Google Analytics Solution Gallery
- Click the Import Button
- Select the View that matches the property you set up to track your CloudCast player and Click Create
- In your Google Analytics navigate to Customization –> Dashboards
- Click the Imported TelVue CloudCast Dashboard to visualize your data with the dashboard
The TelVue CloudCast Dashboard includes widgets for:
- Active Users
- US & World Map Activity
- Recent viewer trends, including total and new viewers
- Video Plays
- Top Video Plays
- Video Plays by App
- Average Seconds Viewed
You can drill in to view more detail from the Dashboard links, which will take you into the detailed Google Analytics views.
You can also use Google Analytics and everything it has to offer directly to get very fine grained details including:
- Audience engagement, behavior
- Device and browser used
- Where your audience is located
- And a host of other fascinating detailed viewer data about your CloudCast player, and each video in it.
The following provides low level details to assist you if you would like to use Google Analytics directly to analyze your data.
Video views are registered as Google Analytics “Events”. To display CloudCast viewer information:
- From the left Nav in your Google Analytics dashboard, go to BEHAVIOR –> Events –> Overview. This displays a graph of all events over time.
Choose the time interval
In the top right corner of the Google Analytics dashboard, set start and end date of the data to be displayed.
What videos are people watching?
Go to BEHAVIOR → Events → Overview.
At the bottom of this page, under “Top Events”:
- Click on Event Category to display information in three categories: Video Plays, Seconds Played, and Percentage Played.
- Click on Event Action to display videos by title.
- Click on Event Label to display videos by viewing app (i.e., Roku or Web).
How many people are watching?
- From the left Nav in your Google Analytics dashboard, go to BEHAVIOR → Events → Overview.
- To isolate just the “Video Plays”, click on “Video Plays” link from the event category list, on the bottom right of this page.
- To display videos by title, click on Event Action
How long are they watching?
1. Track by length of time watched
- From BEHAVIOR → Events → Overview, click on “Seconds Played” link. This gives you the overall viewing times of all videos.
- To sort by video title: Select Secondary Dimension → Select Behavior –> type Event Action in the search field, to add that column to the chart.
- The “Avg. Value” column displays the average viewing time, in seconds, for that particular video.
2. Track by % of video watched (Note: this applies to VOD content only, not live streams)
- From BEHAVIOR → Events → Overview, click on “Percentage Played” link.
- To sort by video title: Select Secondary Dimension → Select Behavior –> type Event Action in the search field, to add that column to the chart.
- The “Avg. Value” column displays the average percentage of that video that was watched.
Where is the audience?
From BEHAVIOR → Events → Overview:
- Click “Event Action” under the “Top Events” section
- Click the video/stream name in the table that appears on the right
- In the page that follows, there’s a table at the bottom that has just a single row for the video name (the primary dimension). Change the primary dimension to “City” instead by clicking the small arrow next to “Event Action” link right above the table.
- This shows a breakdown of the video plays by city, within the given time range selected.
What devices are the viewers using?
- From the left Nav in your Google Analytics dashboard, go to AUDIENCE → Mobile → Overview. This displays a chart showing Desktop, Tablet, Mobile. How many sessions, how long, etc.
- AUDIENCE → Technology → Browser & OS: displays browser use.
Who’s watching on Roku?
To filter for Roku views in Google Analytics:
- Navigate to BEHAVIOR –> Events –> Overview
- At the lower left of the Overview Tab, choose Event Label from the Top Events section
- If there have been any Roku views, these will show up as “Roku App” under the Event Label
- If your station is included in TelVue’s PEG.TV Roku channel as well, these additional views show up as “Roku PEG.TV App”
Other OTT Apps can be filtered similarly.
Export the Analytics report
- Any Google Analytics report can be exported in multiple formats if needed.
